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A
Hi, I'm Katie Duke, and I've been a nurse for over 20 years. Listen, I used to think that I was my most stylish in my 20s, but honestly, style and confidence only get better with age. And that is why I love figs. These scrubs are beautiful, comfortable, and they are built to last. They're not those boxy, scratchy uniforms that we all started out in. No, no, no. These fit perfectly. They feel amazing, and the quality is just, wow. My favorite color, burgundy. It's chic, it's timeless, and it's even the same color as my apartment because I'm kind of obsessed with it. And I love adding custom embroidery to make my scrubs as personal as my style. And since I work in telehealth, my embroidered figs even double as my ID badge. It's never too late to reinvent yourself or your scrubs. Get 15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with the code FIGSRX. That's wherefigs.com code FIGSRX for 15% off your first order.
B
Ending screen time. I got a lot of questions about this that there's always an argument, there's always crying, there's a beg for more, there's often screaming. Why do we get into that power struggle when it comes to ending screen time?
C
It's hard to say the why. Depending on the family, it could be, as I mentioned earlier, there's maybe this aspect of scarcity. It might be, you know, I don't know when I'm going to have it again, so I'm going to try everything I can to try to get more of it. Now. I often encourage families to have this predictable relationship with screen time. It's not an overnight solution. It takes time to get kids used to a routine. Especially if a child is maybe used to a more scarce relationship where they didn't really know when they were going to have access to screens. It can take a long time, it can take weeks for them to really build in trust and buy in into something new. For me and for many people that follow me, they have found that having that predictable relationship, it makes it more predictable for the child, but also for the adult. You know, sometimes we fall into the trap of like, oh, I really need that five extra minutes. Or I just, you know, I can't even right now. And then now I feel guilty. So now I feel like you have to take it away. Well, sometimes having that routine is nice for the adult because then I know, okay, like, I have five more minutes of the screen Time I need to wrap up what I'm doing. I need to make sure I'm in a good stopping point too. I'm not just saying yes forever to get more time, but it also helps me have some like boundaries to fall back on that, you know, I can always say, I know it's so hard to end these fun things. We're ending screen time today. I going to help turn the tablet off right now. Screen time will be available tomorrow again at 5 o'. Clock. Just like it is every day or whatever your routine is to just fall back on that kind of neutral enforcement of boundaries. Are they going to like that? No, they're probably not always going to like that. So depending on, you know, your child or what they're playing, it can also be really helpful to pay attention to the actual structure of what they're doing. So some games, particularly like apps, tablet apps, are very open ended and it's very hard to stop doing something open ended. You know, if I'm in the middle of a project and suddenly someone's like, we have a dinner reservation, we have to leave right now. You know, it's hard, it's hard to just get up in the middle of something. So if you notice that it can be helpful to just pay attention to what the structure is of what they're doing. If they're playing a racing game, we could say, okay, you have time for one more race. If they are doing something that is leveled, okay, we're going to get to the end of this level and then stop. We can use the structure of what they do to help us end it. And if it is something really open ended, obviously we can use time, we can set a timer, we have a visual timer, whatever. But it can be helpful to even make a note of what they're doing, particularly in games like Minecraft or I'm playing the new Zelda right now, it's pretty open ended. I will literally like put myself somewhere so that I'll remember what I was doing. You know, I'll put myself like at the entrance to a building so that when I turn the game back on, I'm like, oh, that's where I was, that's what I'm doing. So we could say, you know, hey, we're going to write on a sticky note what you were working on, put it on the switch so that tomorrow when you turn it on, you remember exactly what you're doing. Another phrase I love that I use all the time is how will you know when you're done? And it's a great sort of off ramp trays of like, hey, we have 10 minutes left. What's one more thing you want to get done today? How will you know you've reached your stopping point today? So that we're building in some of that executive functioning and time management planning too?
B
That was one of the questions that we got from our community was with older kids, how do you help them manage their own screen time?
C
I think it really depends on where is that responsibility level. I guess I would ask yourself, what do you still want to be in control of? I would not relinquish responsibility for something that ultimately you're still going to want the final say on. Because all that's really going to do is you're going to end up in a power struggle, even if you are trying to avoid one. Because if you're in the back of your mind going, oh, but I really want you to do your homework first, then as soon as they say I'm going to do screens and then my homework, you're going to bristle at that, right? So if that's non negotiable, fine, but have those in mind. You know, don't offer something that you're not okay with them changing from what you might want. So maybe you decide, okay, I've decided how much time they get to decide when that time is. You know, maybe I say, hey, you can have an hour of screens today. Do you want it all at once or do you want to break it up? Or they decide when it falls through their day, there will probably be times that they will make decisions that, that we will not like that might not be what we would want. And we can monitor that, right? They might choose, okay, I'm going to come home, get home from school and immediately turn the PlayStation on and not do my homework. And we can watch that from afar and see how that goes. Give them that chance for that responsibility and if it's working for them, great. If we're worried if we're noticing something, then we might choose to step in and have that conversation of like, how is this? Here's what I'm noticing. What are you noticing? Should we try something different so that again, we're building in some of that accountability and not just kind of throwing them to it and say, good luck. So you could do the same thing with content. You might say, okay, we're okay with games with this kind of rating level, or we're okay with one of these 20 games and then they decide which ones they play. You might do similar Things for access to online content. You might say you can play with someone online so long as we've met them. But then they're deciding what friends those are. So there's ways of sort of scaffolding the responsibility. If the ultimate goal is they're managing all these things themselves, I think it can be helpful to think backward and think what are the skills they need to be able to get to that point.
B
I got lots of questions about that for you about safety. How do we keep our children safe online, on YouTube, on even things like, I mean my girls aren't into games, but I think on Roblox even you can speak to strangers. How on earth do we do that?
C
Okay, it depends on the thing. First of all, I will say if people are wanting to learn more about YouTube safety controls, YouTube actually has really in depth and robust controls. They are not intuitive. So on my website, the gamer educator.com I have three pretty long form blog posts, they're all completely free that walk through different ways that you can control YouTube. I think people assume it's YouTube and YouTube kids and that's it. And a lot of people have given YouTube kids a bad rep because a lot of stuff on there is not that appropriate for kids. But YouTube Kids is actually a really great way of giving kids access to YouTube if you pair it with, with the parental settings. So my child has access to YouTube Kids and the way we have it set up is they only see things that we have pre approved for them. They don't see anything that YouTube suggests. They can't click, they can't search. They see the set menu of things that we have approved. But for me then my child can browse those things and I'm not worried. I could leave the room and I'm not concerned because I already know it's on there. There are some in betweens. You can block block Entire channels on YouTube you can block videos. You can monitor an account. Like if you have a teenager and you want to maybe give them more responsibility but also know what they're watching, you can monitor their account through something called Google Family Link. So there's lots of ways to do it. None of it is like 30 second easy. It's maybe 10 to 15 minutes of some intentional setting it up, but then those structures are in place and they're there for you. So those are on my website if that's helpful. Many games also have similarly robust parental controls. Roblox has some pretty good parental controls. A lot of it is doing those things early. You know, if not before you give your child access then pretty soon. Because as I'm sure many people have experienced a lot easier to do that preventatively and proactively than realize, oh my gosh, we have a problem. And now I have to walk everything back. When it comes to games that have an online component, which increasingly is many of them, you can choose many times to just not have the online component be part of what your child can even access. Minecraft has recently entered my family's life. And my family, there's no online component to Minecraft, and my child is still very excited to play it. They don't know that there's anything to do online that game. And for right now, that's fine. They don't need to know more than that. So deciding again, you know, what level of this am I comfortable with to start with. And generally taking the content offline is going to be the safest way to do that. If you can't take it offline, then looking at the controls that are in place and seeing if you can restrict it so that they can't be contacted by people turning chats off, turning audio chats off, you can sometimes restrict it so that they can only see or interact with people that you approve of. So then you're having to approve those people. It might just be family or in real life, friends. So really look at what controls are there. The last thing I will say is Roblox. I did an interview once with a podcast where one of the hosts wasn't there. And then after the fact, I heard the final interview. And this secondary host said something like, oh, yeah, my child doesn't play video games, they just play Roblox. And I thought that was so interesting because I thought, what do you mean they don't play video games, they just play Roblox. Because I describe roblox as the YouTube of gaming. YouTube is largely unregulated video content. Roblox is largely unregulated game content. It can be cool. You can figure out how to make your own game. Like, the tools are pretty much free. That's a really cool thing. Many kids would love to be able to make their own games. And the problem with that is that it's not regulated. There's very, very little regulation. And so even if a game is appropriate, that doesn't mean it's good, that doesn't mean it's well made. And obviously there's going to be content on there that is absolutely not appropriate. So you can restrict Roblox content to only show you things that are a certain age range, I think you can restrict it even further. That's another area where if you can devote some time to get ahead and maybe poke around in there a bit before you give access to a two year kid, it will probably pay off. That investment will really pay off.
A
Hi, I'm Katie Duke and I've been a nurse for over 20 years. Listen, I used to think that I was my most stylish in my 20s, but honestly, style and confidence only get better with age. And that is why I love figs. These scrubs are beautiful, comfortable, and they are built to last. They're not those boxy, scratchy uniforms that we all started out in. No, no, no. These fit perfectly, they feel amazing and the quality is just wow. My favorite color, burgundy. It's chic, it's timeless, and it's even the same color as my apartment because I'm kind of obsessed with it. And I love adding custom embroidery to make my scrubs as personal as my style. And since I work in telehealth, my embroidered figs even double as my ID badge. It's never too late to reinvent yourself or your scrubs. Get 15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with the code FIGSRX. That's wherefigs.com code FIGSRX for 15% off your first order.
Episode: MOMENT | How to avoid screen time battles with Ash Brandin
Date: May 13, 2024
Guest: Dr. Ash Brandin (The Gamer Educator)
Host: Zoe Blaskey
This episode tackles one of the most common struggles in modern parenting: managing children's screen time without descending into power struggles and daily battles. Zoe Blaskey is joined by Dr. Ash Brandin, an educator and gaming expert, to discuss science-backed, practical approaches for setting healthy boundaries, building trust, and keeping kids safe online. Their conversation is aimed at empowering parents to create routines that work for both children and adults, while supporting kids’ gradual growth in independence and responsibility.
[01:07-02:15]
[02:15-03:45]
“Now I feel guilty, so now I feel like you have to take it away. Sometimes having that routine is nice for the adult because then I know, okay, I have five more minutes of the screen time. I need to wrap up what I'm doing.” (C, 02:43)
"I know it’s so hard to end these fun things. We’re ending screen time today. I’m going to help turn the tablet off right now. Screen time will be available tomorrow again at 5 o’clock." (C, 03:15)
[03:45-04:53]
“How will you know when you’re done?...What’s one more thing you want to get done today?” (C, 04:42)
[04:53-07:13]
“I would not relinquish responsibility for something that ultimately you're still going to want the final say on.” (C, 05:07)
[07:13-12:19]
“Taking the content offline is going to be the safest way… If you can’t, restrict it so they can only see or interact with people you approve of.” (C, 09:50)
"Having that predictable relationship, it makes it more predictable for the child, but also for the adult. Sometimes we fall into the trap of, 'I really need those five extra minutes.' ... Having that routine is nice for the adult because then I know, okay, I have five more minutes."
— Ash Brandin, 02:25
"How will you know when you’re done? It’s a great off-ramp. 'We have ten minutes left, what’s one more thing you want to get done today?'"
— Ash Brandin, 04:42
"I would not relinquish responsibility for something that ultimately you’re still going to want the final say on… You might say, 'okay, I've decided how much time, they get to decide when that time is.'"
— Ash Brandin, 05:07
"I describe Roblox as the YouTube of gaming. YouTube is largely unregulated video content. Roblox is largely unregulated game content."
— Ash Brandin, 10:40
Resources Mentioned: